Upgrade StorageiPad workflow
Hi all. This is just a brief report on my efforts to use a tablet for PDF reading and note-taking. I thought I'd write up my proposed workflow in case others are exploring similar options. If anyone has suggestions or has information about how Zotero might evolve to accommodate this kind of work, I'm eager to hear.
First, I must say that I held out for an android tablet forever. I'm not a mac person, but, more importantly, I don't like the way that apple seeks to lock-in users and lock-out a whole range of stuff. I prefer my reality as un-curated as possible. Unfortunately, android tablets are just not as attractive physically right now. I was interested in the Notion Ink Adam, but it seems bulky, buggy, and the 'transflective' screen seemed to be of no use for indoor reading. Then pinned my hopes on the Xoom - overpriced and, in light of the release of the ipad2, thick and heavy. I finally caved and bought an iPad 2. As I said, I am one of those who is fundamentally opposed to curated computing environments, and I look forward to jailbreaking my iPad as soon as possible. But I finally realized that the iPad may be one of those things, like the ipod, that Apple will be doing best for a long time. Would anyone out there choose a Zune over an iPod? I personally use MediaMonkey, not itunes, to manage my music, but as a device the iPod is the best. You get the idea.
OK, so, having taken the plunge, I'm now trying to figure out how to use the iPad to read and annotate PDFs. I'd hoped that there would by now be a good reference management program that also includes a PDF reader/annotator for both desktop and tablet. But I've spent serious time looking at the options and none really work. Mendeley is a mess, and it is not possible to use it without contributing all of your bibliographic info to their big database (not cool). Sente seemed a bit better, and has a great iPad app. But I don't like the way Sente handles file organization, and I'm still on Windows for numerous things and am not ready to switch my OS just for this. Qiqqa also looks good, and has good tagging and search features, but it also copies your whole PDF library and insists on being the syncing agent, which doesn't work for me. Zotero does not have a dedicated PDF reader or an iPad app, but Zotero is the best option for citation management in Word and for finding and importing PDFs. I also like the way Zotero allows users to create links to files rather than insisting on having all PDFs withina Zotero-managed folder. I use ZotFile to move and link downloads, and sync my folders across computers.
For the iPad, I've decided to use GoodReader for accessing and commenting on PDfs. GoodReader allows users to make notes (like sticky notes) which can then be viewed in other PDF readers. It also works well with WebDav servers and various paid cloud-computing options. I'd initially planned to create my own fileserver to handle all of this, but as I spent several days trying to figure out how to do that, I've decided that the annual cost of a commercial option is far smaller than the opportunity cost of learning to become my own webserver technician. So I'm going to use SugarSync. SugarSync stores all of my files on a server, and keeps files synced across computers. I've previously just been syncing files, including my PDF library, using Windows Live Mesh (which is free), but I'll now switch that over to SugarSync and hope that it does not create problems for my PDF library and the Zotero links involved. I'll continue to use Zotero's own web-based syncing for my Zotero library (ie., not the linked files, but the Zotero library itself). The GoodReader + SugarSync combination for iPad has the added benefit of allowing a "download on demand" feature -- you don't actually sync all of your documents to the iPad (I have a huge pdf library which would overwhelm the tablet's meager memory), but rather can see all of the files in the folder and then just choose to open and work with the ones you want.
I'll check back in in a bit and give a report on how this all works out for me. In the meantime, one thing that I'd love to figure out is whether Zotero Everywhere might make it possible to use the Safari browser on the iPad to gain access to a more useful version of my Zotero library. Zotero Everywhere was announced in September, and so far the project has produced standalone Zotero. I haven't installed standalone Zotero (I am using the latest beta of Zotero, 2.1, but have not yet explored the standalone alpha). But it seems that one part of Zotero Everywhere will be a more robust web interface for online Zotero libraries, and that will be very helpful to me as I try to work with the iPad.
Some final points, which have all been raised elsewhere on this forum. 1. It would be great if Zotero included a PDF reader with annotation and text-tagging capabilities. 2. It would be great to have a tablet version of Zotero. 3. It would (will?) be great to have a more robust web-based Zotero library, one that is searchable and sortable and can be accessed using a tablet's browser.
First, I must say that I held out for an android tablet forever. I'm not a mac person, but, more importantly, I don't like the way that apple seeks to lock-in users and lock-out a whole range of stuff. I prefer my reality as un-curated as possible. Unfortunately, android tablets are just not as attractive physically right now. I was interested in the Notion Ink Adam, but it seems bulky, buggy, and the 'transflective' screen seemed to be of no use for indoor reading. Then pinned my hopes on the Xoom - overpriced and, in light of the release of the ipad2, thick and heavy. I finally caved and bought an iPad 2. As I said, I am one of those who is fundamentally opposed to curated computing environments, and I look forward to jailbreaking my iPad as soon as possible. But I finally realized that the iPad may be one of those things, like the ipod, that Apple will be doing best for a long time. Would anyone out there choose a Zune over an iPod? I personally use MediaMonkey, not itunes, to manage my music, but as a device the iPod is the best. You get the idea.
OK, so, having taken the plunge, I'm now trying to figure out how to use the iPad to read and annotate PDFs. I'd hoped that there would by now be a good reference management program that also includes a PDF reader/annotator for both desktop and tablet. But I've spent serious time looking at the options and none really work. Mendeley is a mess, and it is not possible to use it without contributing all of your bibliographic info to their big database (not cool). Sente seemed a bit better, and has a great iPad app. But I don't like the way Sente handles file organization, and I'm still on Windows for numerous things and am not ready to switch my OS just for this. Qiqqa also looks good, and has good tagging and search features, but it also copies your whole PDF library and insists on being the syncing agent, which doesn't work for me. Zotero does not have a dedicated PDF reader or an iPad app, but Zotero is the best option for citation management in Word and for finding and importing PDFs. I also like the way Zotero allows users to create links to files rather than insisting on having all PDFs withina Zotero-managed folder. I use ZotFile to move and link downloads, and sync my folders across computers.
For the iPad, I've decided to use GoodReader for accessing and commenting on PDfs. GoodReader allows users to make notes (like sticky notes) which can then be viewed in other PDF readers. It also works well with WebDav servers and various paid cloud-computing options. I'd initially planned to create my own fileserver to handle all of this, but as I spent several days trying to figure out how to do that, I've decided that the annual cost of a commercial option is far smaller than the opportunity cost of learning to become my own webserver technician. So I'm going to use SugarSync. SugarSync stores all of my files on a server, and keeps files synced across computers. I've previously just been syncing files, including my PDF library, using Windows Live Mesh (which is free), but I'll now switch that over to SugarSync and hope that it does not create problems for my PDF library and the Zotero links involved. I'll continue to use Zotero's own web-based syncing for my Zotero library (ie., not the linked files, but the Zotero library itself). The GoodReader + SugarSync combination for iPad has the added benefit of allowing a "download on demand" feature -- you don't actually sync all of your documents to the iPad (I have a huge pdf library which would overwhelm the tablet's meager memory), but rather can see all of the files in the folder and then just choose to open and work with the ones you want.
I'll check back in in a bit and give a report on how this all works out for me. In the meantime, one thing that I'd love to figure out is whether Zotero Everywhere might make it possible to use the Safari browser on the iPad to gain access to a more useful version of my Zotero library. Zotero Everywhere was announced in September, and so far the project has produced standalone Zotero. I haven't installed standalone Zotero (I am using the latest beta of Zotero, 2.1, but have not yet explored the standalone alpha). But it seems that one part of Zotero Everywhere will be a more robust web interface for online Zotero libraries, and that will be very helpful to me as I try to work with the iPad.
Some final points, which have all been raised elsewhere on this forum. 1. It would be great if Zotero included a PDF reader with annotation and text-tagging capabilities. 2. It would be great to have a tablet version of Zotero. 3. It would (will?) be great to have a more robust web-based Zotero library, one that is searchable and sortable and can be accessed using a tablet's browser.
I wish I had this post a couple of months ago. I have virtually followed the identical steps and have arrived at the same conclusion. I did like the automatic syncing in Sente of all computers and ipad and the link in ipad between reading and reference manager. I particularly liked the fact that I could download journals directly into Sente's ipad reference manager and know that this would sync across my computers. I was hoping to have all my pdfs on my ipad but syncing was not as smooth as it should be with Sente. These syncing problems (along with other reference management issues) were the main reason I have stayed with Zotero. (The recent update in Sente for iPad seems to have resolved the syncing issues.)
So I use Zotero and sync my files with SugarSync across computers. I also use Goodreader to annotate files 'synced' with SugarSync. Unlike you, I would like to have all my pdfs in Goodreader but syncing does not behave well with that many files and folders to sync (I have about 3Gbs worth). I have also found that when I annotate a file and save as separate, it does not sync back to my computer through SugarSync (perhaps I am missing something). I have also tried iAnnotate which works fine for a few files but seems to crash when I try to download/upload all my files.
In short, I would love the kind of integration and syncing of Sente but with Zotero, and it's not quite there yet. I even considered looking into the new version of Papers with the hope of maybe maintaining two reference managers in sync and using Papers' iPad app to get the kind of integration I want....but I haven't found the time or energy to try that yet.
I look forward to any ideas of how better to achieve your stated objectives (which I repeat):
1. It would be great if Zotero included a PDF reader with annotation and text-tagging capabilities. 2. It would be great to have a tablet version of Zotero. 3. It would (will?) be great to have a more robust web-based Zotero library, one that is searchable and sortable and can be accessed using a tablet's browser.
I'm using goodreader to access well over 30GB of files, including a very large repository of PDFs including numerous books I've scanned. It's that repository that my Zotero library links to. Not sure how you've set up your workflow, but linking the Zotero library to PDFs contained in an external folder is an important piece of the puzzle.
I also do not sync my files to the IPad in GoodReader. Rather, when I want to read a PDF from my collection, I go to the SugarSync connection, connect, and browse for that file (all are named "Author - Title") and sync that particular file to my GoodReader docs. Note that you have to select "sync" at the bottom of the list, not "download", in order to be able to re-sync back to SugarSync. One problem so far is that the list of files is so long it requires a Herculean swipe/flick to get to the right place -- that's an iOS problem. Anyway, that gets the single file onto your iPad, and you can read, edit, annotate, etc. to your heart's content, and then re-sync back to SugarSync when you're done. To sync your comments etc. back to the server, you locate the individual file in the "Remote Sync" column on the right of the GoodReader panel (located within "Web Downloads") and tap on the green sync button. Good luck.
https://www.zotero.org/trac/changeset/8770
I am presently doing double work keeping a complete copy of my references in Zotero and Sente. In Zotero I am using SugarSync to keep my files synced and linked with my library. My pdfs are all linked in an external folder. I use Zotfile extension to organize these folders. Sente is now syncing just fine so it has the nice feature of directly linking reference with pdf on my ipad as well as being able to do targeted browsing from my ipad and directly downloading articles that are then automatically synced.
I would be happy to avoid the double effort but for now I like the complete set of features that this gives me.
Fogleman, TN sounds like a nice addition to the iPad. I will check this out soon.
Looking forward to new developments.
http://www.bobdeschutter.be/?p=498
One of the problems I'd had with my workflow was that the process for syncing files in GoodReader just wasn't automatic enough for me. Now that GoodReader is iCloud compatible, it has dramatically improved my workflow. Instead of selecting a Dropbox folder as my Zotfile Reader directory, I'm using the GoodReader iCloud sync folder. This has some tremendous advantages. I don't have to tell GoodReader to sync for me anymore. Any annotations I make to my PDFs on my iPod are instantly pushed to my computer, and anytime I annotate a pdf on my computer it is instantly pushed to my iPod.
To get all this set up, you need to setup iCloud on your mobile device and your Mac, and then enable it iCloud in GoodReader. You'll then get an iCloud GoodReader folder on your mac (in a fairly hard to find place, explained here: http://www.goodiware.com/gr-man-general.html#icloud). Then you tell Zotfile reader to use that folder as its directory.
It makes the Zotero-GoodReader experience so much nicer.
I plan to release this version soon but it would be good to have some more people who try this version out...
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/5301/6/zotero-plugin-to-rename-move-and-attach-your-pdfs-to-zotero-items/#Comment_113687
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/20588/ipad-application/#Item_44